The Plant Press

Vickianthus, a new genus of the Vernonieae (Compositae), chosen to honor Vicki Funk

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 4, October 2023.

Herbarium sheet showing Vernonia alamanii DC. (Mexico, Valle de Cenancingo, Lyonnet 552, January 1931) designated as the type species Vickianthus alamanii (DC.) H. Rob. for the new genus Vickianthus H. Rob.

The sunflower family (Compositae) has the largest number of accepted species of any plant family, estimated to be between 25,000 to 30,000 in ca. 1,700 genera. Because of the size of the family and its complexity of flower structures, Compositae is divided into 45 tribes to reflect evolutionary relationships and shared characteristics. Harold Robinson and Sterling Keeley worked on one of the larger tribes in this family, Vernonieae. Morphologically diverse and globally distributed, this tribe comprises over 1,500 species with extensive distributions in both the Old and New Worlds. Coined as the “evil tribe” by Vicki Funk, this tribe has a continuum of overlapping morphological characters/states which makes it very difficult to resolve many of its systematic relationships.

Morphological work by Robinson and phylogenomic studies of Keeley in the past 40 years are only now beginning to tease apart this complicated “evil tribe” and provide a better understanding of the underlying morphological relationships within. With strong support from a recent molecular phylogenetic study of the Vernonieae across its entire geographical range by Keeley and the work by Robinson, ten Mexican species of Vernonia and Vernonanthura were transferred to the new genus, Vickianthus in the newly released paper, “Vickianthus, a new genus of the Vernonieae (Compositae) from Mexico” by Harold Robinson†, Vicki A. Funk†, Carol L. Kelloff, and Raymund Chan, and is published in Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (https://doi.org/10.17348/jbrit.v17.i1.1291).

As Robinson states in the paper, “The name of the genus is chosen to honor the late Dr. Vicki Ann Funk (not Victoria), who was (and remains) a coauthor on the paper in spite of the present decision to name the genus for her”. Unfortunately, Robinson also passed away before the paper was finished, so to honor Robinson, the paper was completed in this present version by his co-authors.

Vicki Funk collecting plants on Volcano Tacna, Chile in 2014. (photo by Mauricio Diazgranados)

A look at the Guiana Shield plant collections of Redden and Wurdack

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2023.

For more than 30 years, the Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield (BDG) studied, documented, and preserved the biological diversity of the Guiana Shield in northern South America, which comprises parts of French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela. The BDG program resulted in numerous publications, and a recently produced publication documents a decade of specimen collections by former and current Smithsonian botanists Karen Redden and Ken Wurdack. The open access publication written by Carol Kelloff, Karen Redden, Ken Wurdack, and Sara Alexander (Smithsonian Contribution to Botany, no. 116) is available for download at https://doi.org/10.5479/si.21912828.

On "Palm Mountain" in October 2008. Left to right: Claudius Perry, Nigel John, Pads Ragnauth, Karen Redden, Elvis Joseph, and Ken Wurdack. (self-timed photo)

In 2006, Vicki Funk asked Redden and Wurdack, who had met in the U.S. National Herbarium the previous year, if they would conduct a joint collecting expedition for the BDG. The BDG had maintained a full- or part-time resident collector in Guyana from 1986 until 2000, after which point it sponsored regular collecting expeditions to locations across the Guiana Shield. Redden and Wurdack’s first trip in 2006 was followed by 16 more (5 jointly plus additional expeditions by Redden with others), in a collaborative partnership that would last until the BDG’s final expedition in 2014.

Plant and lichen discovery in the southern Philippines

From Plant Press, Vol. 26, No. 2, April 2023.

By Manuela Dal Forno and Jun Wen

On January 11, 2023, we started our journey to the Philippines, Manuela Dal Forno from Fort Worth Botanic Garden in Texas and Jun Wen from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Little did we know then what adventures would wait for us in the Philippines. After traveling around 40 hours “door-to-door,” we arrived at our host institution, Central Mindanao University (CMU) in Maramag, Bukidnon Province on Mindanao Island.

Group photo during the first field day at Mt. Balatukan (Gingoog City, Barangay Kalagonoy, Mount Balatukan Range Natural Park) on January 18, 2023. (self-timed photo)

This journey, “Expedition 4,” was the fourth of a larger botanical project which started in 2018. For this most recent expedition, we worked in the Philippines for a total of 29 days and visited two main locations: Mt. Balatukan, part of the Mount Balatukan Range Natural Park in Misamis Oriental Province, in northern Mindanao; and Dinagat Islands, where we visited multiple municipalities, including Loreto, Basilisa, San Jose, Libjo and Tubajon. Toward the end of the trip, we collected in two additional localities, Mt. Musuan and Mt. Nebo, in the Valencia Valley of Bukidnon Province relatively close to our base at CMU. We were very fortunate to have the help of our Filipino colleagues who worked on the logistical details, such as meal planning, lodging, and securing permits ahead of time with the local communities and authorities. We especially thank Academician Dr. Victor Amoroso, Dr. Fulgent Coritico, Dr. Florfe Acma and Ms. Joie Lagumbay at CMU for their hard work on all the logistics for the expedition, and for the support from the local governments and communities.

Our trips were largely covered through two NSF-funded grants (DEB 1754697 and 1754667), namely, “Collaborative Research: Plant Discovery in the southern Philippines.” The main PI for this project is Peter Fritsch from the Fort Worth Botanic Garden (FWBG, more specifically BRIT, or Botanical Research Institute of Texas), with co-PIs Darin Penneys (University of North Carolina at Wilmington, WNC), Manuela Dal Forno (FWBG), and Dan Nickrent (Cornell University).

Specimen spotlight

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2022.

The isotype of Chenopodium ucrainicum (Amaranthaceae) was recently processed by the U.S. National Herbarium and was received during the Covid-19 shutdown. Collected in Kyiv, Ukraine on October 2, 2019, the specimen was brought to the herbarium by Konstantyn Romashchenko, Research Associate in the Department of Botany.

The specimen was collected by Sergei Mosyakin, Director of the Kholodny Institute of Botany, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He collected it in the Tatarka historical neighborhood of Kyiv. Described in 2020 by Mosyakin and Bohumil Mándak (Prague, Czech Republic) (Ukrayins'k. Bot. Zhurn. 77: 237–248; https://doi.org/10.15407/ukrbotj77.04.237), it was initially reliably known from just several localities in Ukraine, but now dozens of new sites in central Ukraine are known, which means that it is probably more widespread in Eastern Europe. Its native versus alien status in Europe remains problematic. A late-flowering and late-fruiting species, the new taxon is well isolated from gene flow and hybridization with closely related species that flower earlier in the year.

Sergei Mosyakin with Chenopodium ucrainicum. (photo by Andrew Mosyakin)

Chenopodium ucrainicum is an overlooked B-genome diploid related to C. suecicum and C. ficifolium, meaning that it is a "basic" species that contributed to the recent speciation in the polyploid complex of C. album and its relatives, such as noxious weeds like hexaploid C. album (in a wide sense) and crops like tetraploid C. quinoa. The newly described species will help in understanding the evolution of the group and might prove to be useful for genetic improvement of quinoa crops because of its late development and resistance to cold.

Left: Chenopodium ucrainicum in the southern part of Kyiv Region. Right: Andrew Mosyakin with Chenopodium ucrainicum. (photos by Sergei Mosyakin)

New issue of the Journal of Systematics and Evolution investigates the biogeography and phylogenetics within the grasses

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2022.

Paul Peterson and Robert Soreng organized and published (with help from Konstantin Romaschenko) a complete issue of the Journal of Systematics and Evolution [60(3): 473-712; 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/jse.12776] investigating the biogeography and phylogenetics within the grasses. Using the fossil record to aid in dating their phylogenetic trees and combining molecular sequence studies of DNA, they reconstructed ancestral states to infer the origin of major clades; i.e., subfamilies, tribes, supersubtribes, subtribes, and selected genera in the grasses. For this special issue, Peterson and Soreng invited a broadly trained group of 35 scientists to collaborate and present their most recent advances culminating in 10 publications.

Phylogenetic reconstruction and timetree of the Poaceae and close relatives (Joinvillea, Ecdeioclea, and Flagellaria) based on chloroplast DNA sequence from 700 samples, as seen in Gallaher, et al. (2022). The branches are color-coded by subfamily and collapsed at the subtribal level. Nodes with posterior probabilities below 0.99 are marked with a white node symbol and the posterior probability is shown. Node bars represent the 95% highest posterior density of node age estimates.

Four of the manuscripts in the issue include new dated biogeographical analyses (Gallaher et al., 2022; Peterson et al., 2022b; Soreng et al., 2022a; Zhou et al., 2022); three comprise new phylogenetic analyses with novelties (Da Silva et al., 2022; Peterson et al., 2022a, 2022c), one is an ecological study investigating functional traits in a clade of savanna/wetland grasses (Arthan et al., 2022), one looked at the current distribution of the grasses over the Australian continent to determine migration directionality (Bryceson & Morgan, 2022), and one is an updated classification of the family primarily based on molecular phylogenetic studies (Soreng et al., 2022b).

Lost South American wildflower named “extinctus” rediscovered (but still endangered) [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

-Adapted from the Field Museum.

Scientific names get chosen for lots of reasons-- they can honor an important person, or hint at what an organism looks like or where it’s from. For a tropical wildflower first described by Smithsonian Botanist Laurence Skog and his colleague Lars Kvist in 2000, the scientific name “extinctus” was a warning. The orange wildflower had been found 15 years earlier in an Ecuadorian forest that had since been largely destroyed; Skog and Kvist suspected that by the time they named the species, it was already extinct (Syst. Bot. Monogr. 59: 1-118; 2000; https://doi.org/10.2307/25027883). But in a new paper in PhytoKeys (https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.194.79638), researchers report the first confirmed sightings of Gasteranthus extinctus in 40 years.

The bright orange flowers of the Ecuadorian cloud forest herb Gasteranthus extinctus, a species once long believed to have gone extinct. (photo by Riley Fortier)

“Extinctus was given its striking name in light of the extensive deforestation in western Ecuador,” says Dawson White, a postdoctoral researcher at Chicago’s Field Museum and co-lead author of the paper. “But if you claim something's gone, then no one is really going to go out and look for it anymore. There are still a lot of important species that are still out there, even though overall, we're in this age of extinction.”

An exceptional symposium explores plants on the edge [Video]

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 3, July 2022.

The 19^th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, co-hosted by the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany and the United States Botanic Garden (USBG), made a welcome return to the National Museum of Natural History’s (NMNH) Baird Auditorium on May 13, 2022, three years after the last time the event was held in person. The Symposium, “Life on the Edge: Exceptional Plants in Exceptional Places,” was a hybrid event, bringing together five engaging speakers to present their research to both in-person and virtual audiences from around the world. The invited speakers included scientists specializing in conservation, ecology, systematics, and genetics whose research explores plant adaptation and survival in extreme parts of the natural world. The speakers talked about their research on plants (and lichens) growing in exceptional environments, from the tepuis of the Guayana Shield and the steep cliffs of Hawaii to the South African Fynbos, the Mojave Desert, and even New York City. They spoke about natural history and evolution, and the challenges plants endure in the face of climate change and increasing pollution.

Susan Pell (far right) moderates a panel discussion with the symposium’s speakers: (from left) Fabián Michelangeli, Tanisha Williams, Jessica Allen, Jenna Ekwealor, and Ben Nyberg. (photo by Ken Wurdack)

Eric Schuettpelz, NMNH Chair of Botany, welcomed the audience to the symposium and Rebecca Johnson, NMNH Associate Director for Science and Chief Scientist, provided opening remarks. In her comments, Johnson talked about a project, “Life on a Sustainable Planet,” currently in development at NMNH, and she tied the project to the theme of the symposium. She described the new project as, “understanding, explaining, and amplifying the reach, relevance, and impact of the work here at the Smithsonian,” and the relevance to the tens of thousands of species 'on the edge'. Susan Pell, USBG Deputy Executive Director, also provided opening remarks and gave an orientation to the USBG, including a description of the living collections, current online and in-person programming, and their scientific and conservation partnerships.

Specimen collected by Smithsonian botanist in the 1920s determined to be a new species nearly a century later

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

By Jerald Pinson (Florida Museum of Natural History)

A plant specimen that had been collected in northwestern Haiti in 1929 by Smithsonian botanist E.C. Leonard has led researchers from the Florida Museum of Natural History to the discovery of a new plant species, Castela senticosa, which they recommend be designated as endangered. The plant, which grows as a small bush sheathed in an imposing layer of spines, was recently found during a survey to catalog the flora of the Martín García mountain range in the Dominican Republic and compared to the Leonard specimen.

Castela senticosa produces flowers and fruit at the tail-end of the dry season, when most other plants are still dormant. Although risky, this allows them to stand out to pollinators and dispersers that might otherwise miss them in the dense vegetation common during the rainy season. (photo courtesy of Systematic Botany)

“We were collecting everything we came across with the goal of having a complete species list for the entire mountain range,” said lead author Lucas Majure, an assistant curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History and curator of the University of Florida Herbarium.

Hispaniola’s mountains support large swaths of intact tropical dry forests, highly diverse ecosystems that — like the rainforests they border — are globally imperiled due to the combined effects of deforestation, overharvesting and climate change. But although they face the same threats, the destruction of a tropical dry forest might mean the loss of considerably more species. That’s because rainforests are often found in lowland basins, where conditions like rainfall, temperature and soil type are similar over large areas. While species diversity is high, many rainforest plants can have distributions that span hundreds of miles.

Ancient hybridization and genome doubling explain the origin of the apple tribe

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

In the 1930s, biologists studying chromosomes in the rose family (Rosaceae) noticed that species in the apple tribe (Maleae) had approximately twice as many chromosomes (base chromosome number = 17) as every other species in the rose family (base chromosome number = 7, 8, or 9). Over the ensuing decades, researchers proposed hypotheses of hybridization and/or genome doubling to explain the evolutionary origin of the apple tribe and the unusually high chromosome counts in the apple tribe.

There were two competing hypotheses explaining the evolutionary origin of the apple tribe, but it was difficult to test them rigorously with the data available at the time. For many years, botanists tested these hypotheses using morphological characters, chromosome count data, and more recently, single-locus genetic data. Until a few years ago, researchers did not have access to genome-scale genetic data to test hypotheses of ancient hybridization and/or genome doubling.

An ancient hybridization event gave rise to the apple tribe (Maleae) in the rose family, Rosaceae. Maleae taxa include (from left) sweet crabapple (Malus coronaria), Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana), and Canadian serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis). (photos by Richie Hodel and Jun Wen)

Smithsonian scientists Richie Hodel, Liz Zimmer, Bin-Bin Liu, and Jun Wen synthesized recently published phylogenomic data from the nuclear and chloroplast genomes of multiple species in the rose family, and applied novel phylogenetic network and multiply-labeled tree analyses to resolve the origin of the apple tribe. They found that an ancient hybridization event occurred between ancestors of the Rosaceae tribes Sorbarieae and Spiraeeae, likely between approximately 65-50 million years ago. Phylogenetic network analyses indicated this hybridization event gave rise to the clade Gillenieae + Maleae. The tribe Gillenieae is a small clade with follicular fruit sister to the larger pome-bearing apple tribe. In contrast to the Maleae, the Gillenieae do not have elevated chromosome counts, indicating that this hybridization event promoted the diversification of the clade Gillenieae + Maleae, but does not explain the high chromosome number in Maleae.

Another key result was that subsequent allopolyploidy (genome doubling involving two distinct species) between ancestors of the apple tribe likely occurred between approximately 50-35 million years ago. Multiply-labeled tree analyses indicated this event probably followed the divergence of the Gillenieae and Maleae lineages. This genome doubling event explains the elevated chromosome numbers observed in the Maleae by researchers over the past century. The research is published in Frontiers in Plant Science (https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.820997).

Rosaceae tribe, Amygdaleae, which includes (from left) Japanese apricot (Prunus mume) and almond (Prunus dulcis), was once hypothesized to have played a role in a hybridization event leading to the apple tribe, but recent research indicates the participants in the ancient hybridization event were likely ancestors of the tribes Spiraeeae and Sorbarieae. (photos by Richie Hodel and Jun Wen)

Explosive fossil fruit found buried beneath ancient Indian lava flows

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 2, April 2022.

-Adapted from Jerald Pinson (The Florida Museum of Natural History).

Just before the closing scenes of the Cretaceous Period, India was a rogue subcontinent on a collision course with Asia. Before the two landmasses merged, however, India rafted over a “hot spot” within the Earth’s crust, triggering one of the largest volcanic eruptions in Earth’s history, which likely contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In a recent study published in the International Journal of Plant Sciences (183: 128-138; 2022 https://doi.org/10.1086/717691) scientists excavating the fossilized remains of plant material wedged between layers of volcanic rock describe a new plant species based on the presence of distinctive fruit capsules that likely exploded to disperse their seeds. The fossils may be the oldest fruit discovered to date of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), a group of plants with more than 7,000 species, with well-known representatives that include poinsettia, castor oil plant, rubber trees, and crotons.

The fruit of Euphorbiotheca deccanensis is potentially the oldest ever discovered of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae). Based on the preserved fibers within the fossilized fruit, researchers think it likely exploded to disperse its seeds. (photo by Kristen Grace, Florida Museum of Natural History)

The fossilized fruits were discovered near the village of Mohgaon Kalan in central India, where the remains of the once-widespread volcanic rock lie just beneath the surface in a complex mosaic.